It’s just crossed over into November as I write. I am in my hotel room in Washington DC, Dominique is asleep with a book on her chest. I just finished doing some late night business with my intrepid manager Barbara Mitchell-going over travel arrangements for the upcoming KS European tour, scheduling interviews, studio time etc (all of which must be surgically inserted into free time on the REM tour). I had the day off in the nation’s capital today, Dom & I strolled in and out of various shops and museums, past assorted monuments and the functionaire sweatshops that loom here and there, many of which (Justice Dept. et al) would not look out of place as DeMille or Fritz Lang set pieces. Oct. 31 was an eerily gorgeous day-I say that, not because it’s Halloween, but because it has become reasonable to expect the sky to crack at any moment in these times. Sept. 11, 2001 dawned almost everywhere in this country one of the sunniest, laziest days imaginable-until your phone started ringing with people telling you to turn on the TV, unable to convey what was being shown.
Today in Washington, I walked out of the Nat’l Air and Space museum, affected most deeply not by the glories of Yeager, Glenn etc. but by the cold, symmetric simplicity of the V2, and the shredded humanity it created. The sun was igniting the backdrop to the Washington Monument with gold and pink, bouncing off the Capitol dome. Leaves were glorious, ridiculous: food-coloring- red and manila-envelope-yellow, and disintegrating under boots, smelling wonderful. We saw an albino squirrel, and a woman in a sari photographing it with a disposable camera. Bats (on cue for the E’en) managed to zip through solely in one’s peripheral vision. At 6pm it was about 75 degrees.
There was no orchestral upswelling scoring my thoughts in those moments. The amber wave stuff seems finished for now. I have been experiencing fear for the future, while trying to maintain optimism.
Understand that if John Kerry wins on Tuesday (which is what I do hope will happen), all is not well. It’s merely a postponement of a confrontation, or series of confrontations, that still lay ahead—where we will look at ourselves as individuals, as neighbors, and as humans and not be able to shrug. Sept. 11 was horrible, but certainly an opportunity to introspect and macro-spect. One wonders what the next nudge will be (if that was a nudge, what does a push look like?)
I am rambling out of my element. But, I will say, the techniques I have seen employed by the right (even with all the safeguards in place to restrain them) to create meaningless media outlets for opinion-only based news, to give lazy people an easy target to cast their aggressions onto, to equate discourse with defeatism, to bark the victory growl as the explosive din gets louder-these give me pause to consider: the willingness of the people to believe in the most convenient truth. A nation feels victimized after a military defeat, and becomes the nation that builds the V2.
I can’t say that everything begins or ends on Nov. 2. I cast my vote, I hope you all cast yours, and that’s where I’ve left it. But I’m not pulling the protest songs off the in-progress Posies album yet, no matter what the outcome.
On a lighter note: thanks to Dominique, REM/Crew, Angela McCluskey and band, and the rock-steady people gathered in Atlantic City Saturday night for pummeling me with joy on my 36th birthday… even as I went over the top… of my keyboard… and accidentally derailed it from its moorings (I coulda lost it and my right foot). Michael sang Bonne Anniversaire, cake was mashed on my face, and I was absolutely embarrassed and wouldn’t have changed one thing. A thousand apologies to Bob Weber!!!! I’ll see you on the other side of the rest of history.
Love
KS
Washington DC